


You Must Remember This

by phaedrearden



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M, Multi, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 01:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12784428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phaedrearden/pseuds/phaedrearden
Summary: Dean forgets to remember, then remembers to forget.





	You Must Remember This

"Where am I?" he wondered out loud--he hoped; everything was fuzzy, including his voice in his own ears, like sounds underwater--though it was obvious he was in someone's lap, and he thought maybe the question should have been "Who are you".

Or maybe "Who am I".

"We're in an empty house." The voice speaking over his head resonated softly in an echo-chamber chest. It was a soothing male voice. He knew it, he was sure. Fingertips were stroking through the short hair around his ear; it didn't hurt, and there wasn't any other pain in his head.

"What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

"Squat."

"Do you know your name?"

"Um..."

"It's Dean."

"Yeah, that, I was just about...um."

"Can you open your eyes?"

Dean blinked experimentally, lashes fluttering, as weird images shifted around in multiple groups in his visual field. Eventually, things started to settle. 

"Can you see? I know it's dim in here."

He managed to raise his eyes, and when he started trying to tilt his head back, the man holding him changed position and grip carefully, supporting the back of his head with one dinner-plate-sized hand. Dean's eyes slowly focused on the face of a hugely and gracefully constructed young man, and he smiled--he knew this guy, he *knew* he knew this guy.

He reached up and pushed the floppy bangs out of hazel eyes that turned up at the corners, and he muttered, as though analyzing, "Yeah, you're...beautiful. I know you." He squinted. "I'm pretty sure I love you."

The young man smiled, his eyes dropping from Dean's face; then he glanced back up. "Yeah, you've said that before. You don't remember?"

"Uh, no. Well, yes. I know your face. I know I...are we...?"

"We are," the young man murmured. "I guess you don't remember my name?"

Dean squinched his eyes again, then shook his head. "Sorry."

"It's okay; you couldn't even remember yours. I'm Sam. Winchester. Your last name is Winchester too, by the way."

"We're *married*?" Dean blinked. 

Sam smiled. "We're brothers."

"Brothers," Dean breathed. It *felt* right, looking at this guy and thinking that word, but..."I...was sure..."

"We do that, too."

Dean was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said "I take it we don't talk about that part a lot."

Sam chuckled shortly. "Not to other people, no. Except one."

Dean braced himself. "Who?"

"Our other lover. His name is Castiel. We call him Cas."

Dean stared, then rolled his head to hide his face in Sam's arm. "Could you hit me over the head and see if that fixes whatever's wrong with my brain?"

"That would only give you a big lump and a headache, I'm afraid. The specifics of your memory are messed up because of a curse. I think you only caught the edge of it. It missed me completely."

"A curse? Like..." he frowned. Several places where curses might originate entered his head, but he didn't know why, or where they came from. Apparently the amnesia *was* only partial, though. He'd probably get everything back in time, especially since he'd remembered his name as soon as he'd been reminded of it, and Sam's as well, though their last name, while he liked it, still felt like someone else's. He guessed first names were more intimate to a person. "Was it a witch?"

"No, though we were here to see a witch. Two witches, a woman and her husband. They'd come up with a way to deflect demon whammy. You remember, the kind that doesn't work on me? Uh, didnt?"

"Uh...not exactly. Though that sounds...kind of...screw it, just keep telling me what happened."

"They work with a hunter friend of ours...our adopted uncle, Bobby, and some other hunters. They got hold of us through him--they're trying to get the particulars of making the amulet to as many hunters as they can, as quickly as possible. They'd been working here, making amulets and teaching hunters how to make them so the knowledge'd spread faster--but unfortunately a small posse of actual demons found this place right as we got here--the two of us and Cas--"

A picture flashed in Dean's mind. "Tall guy, blue eyes, hardly smiles--somehow...I get this impression that he manages to drip sensitivity sometimes anyway...and--Jesus--" a couple more visuals had flashed behind Dean's eyes, "--can beat the living *shit* out of anything in his way?"

Sam had a harder time controlling his laugh this time, but he managed "That's Castiel. He's an angel. He's actually about six feet--a little shorter than you--but I never think of him as smaller than me unless he's right in front of me, either. He's stronger than both of us combined. Even stronger than that, but I've never seen him go all out. Until tonight, maybe." Sam sighed in worry, glancing around. 

"What? What happened? Keep talking." Angels. Demons. Fuck. Other pictures--unattractive, mostly, unless they involved Sam here or the "Cas" guy--angel--began swirling in his head. 

"Where was I--uh, this place was protected, of course, but they got in, don't ask me how--it was through the upstairs somehow. You've been unconscious for about fifteen minutes, and I haven't gone to look. We're the only ones left here."

"Where'd everyone else go?" He thought about asking for some help sitting up, but then decided the hell with it. The cradle of Sam's arms and legs felt familiar and comfortable, even if he couldn't remember ever being in it before. Yet, at least.

"The witches--Shanna Pearlman and Rich Salas--heard Cas yell at them to get themselves gone; and they grabbed each other, chanted and disappeared--they must have had an emergency escape spell set up already. Those two are good; very pro, very responsible. They know their shit."

"Not totally, apparently, the demons got in when you said they should have been kept out by the witch stuff."

"Has to have been a fluke. Cas didn't feel anything wrong here, either, and he's good with that, even without his connection to the main office."

"Main office?"

"Heaven. Cas--Castiel--rebelled against Heaven to prevent me from making the biggest mistake that maybe anybody's ever made--or to allow you to try to stop me, at least."

"Did I?"

Sam shook his head grimly. "No. The demon who was with me--she was supposed to be an escapee from hell; supposed to be on our side--I trusted her. She stopped you from stopping me." 

Shit. Whatever. "So getting back to tonight. You were saying something about Cas...?"

"Cas had the knife--Ruby's knife; that was the name of the mole demon that I trusted. She had a knife--the one that killed her, ironically enough--that kills demons if you stab a possessed host. It kills the host, too, unfortunately, but a lot of demon hosts are already dead. The silver knives we had only killed the host and exorcised the demon until it found someone else to possess. Cas used to be able to kill a demon with a touch to the host. That's one of the abilities he lost when he rebelled and Heaven cut off his main line."

"Oh. Um...did he lose anything else? Is he...I know I remember him doing some things--"

"What he lost was the ability to heal other living things, the ability to time-travel without a lot of danger to himself, and the ability to kill demons with the forehead touch. Everything else is just...inherent in him, as an angel. He can be...exhausted, in a manner of speaking, but by and large he's still him. He won't lose that unless Heaven withdraws from Earth completely. He says if that happens, his mojo will slowly fade."

Dean didn't know, at the moment, what "everything"--or "mojo", for that matter--might consist of, but one thing seemed obvious. "That's why he's such a machine in a fight, then."

"Especially with Ruby's knife. There were a dozen or so of them; he dropped at least eight. The demons couldn't penetrate the last circle of defense that we were all inside--except Cas, who happened to be outside it when Shanna was forced to activate it, when he told her to. I was carrying the knife, and I threw it to him. They converged on him, but once they realized they were *all* going to end up dead if they didn't get out of here PDQ, that's when they tried the amnesia whammy--I suppose to make us forget how to make the amulets, or make the witches forget, more importantly. Immunity to demon whammy would be a huge advantage to the human side. Anyway, then Cas yelled at the witches to stop throwing confusion and forgetfulness and life-draining forces at the demons--spells like that only work half the time on demons, anyway--and get themselves out of danger. You and I were shielding Shanna and Rich while they grabbed each other and did as Cas said, and then you were tackling me, and then there was a light like a bunch of kliegs exploding--that happens a lot around demons and angels--and the demons that were still up, and Cas, were gone. There are eight dead host bodies in the other room." Sam hissed an angry sigh, punctuated by a knit brow, as he lifted his eyes to gaze back in the direction of the dilapidated doorway. 

"Cas is...then where..."

"I don't know. Right at the moment, I'm just glad there's no more wrong with you than this. Cas has...has gotten out of some incredibly hairy scrapes, he's the toughest *any* kind of creature I've ever known that was even vaguely humanlike. I do know this; I looked for the knife, and it's not in there, not stuck in any of the dead bodies, not anywhere on the floor. It's reasonable to hope that he's still the one that has it. I just wish I was with him."

"I have a feeling I'd hate it if anything happened to him, too."

"Yeah. We would. Okay, I've packed up all the gear that was still in shape to use--the witches' stuff as well as ours. I think I can make some more amulets with what was left. We'll just have to let them find us, or find Bobby or someone; that's safest for everyone. When they get their feet back under them, they'll come out from wherever they're hiding, with some better wards working, hopefully. Let's get back to the car. We've got a motel room nearby; Cas might stop by here to make sure we're not stuck or injured, but once he did that, he'd go back there next. And you're remembering things pretty well; maybe if you see some more that helps you make connections, this'll pass."

***

It was dark out; they left the house in the light of the yard-flooder that had apparently been put there to help keep potential trouble from setting up in the several abandoned houses at that edge of the town, not that anyone ever seemed to check on the place. 

Dean saw the Impala.

"Oh, my *God*," he gushed, all but staggering forward. Sam was forced to smile as he let go of Dean's arm. Dean collapsed against the car, his arms out flat across the roof. "'67 Impala, cheezit, it looks cherry, how the--" he suddenly spun, barely keeping his balance with a hand on the car roof. "Is *this*...?"

"This is our car. Technically, it's yours; Dad gave it to you, and you spoil it to the point I'm surprised it agrees to run. But I've lived in it almost since I was born, so I feel like I've got some proprietary rights, too."

Dean had turned back to the car, arms out across the roof again, cheek against the top, as though in an embrace. "I love this car. I want to *fuck* this car. I want to *marry* this car. I want to bear this car's *children*."

"Uh, yeah," Sam said, scratching behind his ear and appearing mildly uncomfortable when Dean peeked around at him. Maybe Dean was overdoing it just a little. Sam finished "You do. Anyone who knows you knows that. Um...please don't hump the car, Dean. Not right now, at least. That'd be like a private-time thing, I think."

Oh, shit. "Sorry, man." Dean moved quickly away from the side of the Impala. "It's the spell."

"Yeah, you forgot whether or not you fuck your car. I unlocked it; hop in, I'm driving. You're right; you're disoriented."

"I usually drive, then?"

"Well, it's your car. I drive a lot, too, though. We put in one hell of a lot of road time." Sam was coming around the front of the car, and got in the driver's side. He inserted the key in the ignition, then paused, looking at Dean.

Dean blinked slowly back at him; occasionally, things were still going slightly double-vision on him. "Yeah? Should I apologize about the, uh, car again?"

Sam grinned, hugely, and Christ. He found himself grinning back. Yeah, okay, it was his brother, but apparently he didn't usually have any problems with that. Sam said "No, I really could have figured you'd do that, actually."

"Gee, thanks."

"You're kind of a slut. We both like women, too, and, well...if you still had time, between Cas and me and the world ending..."

Dean didn't mind the slut thing. In fact, he felt kind of slutty at the moment, and it didn't bother him. However. "Yeah, about the world ending--"

"We'll get back to that. C'mere." He reached for Dean's shoulder and Dean let himself be pulled--with amazing ease; Sam was apparently as strong as he looked, namely the equivalent of a team of Clydesdales--and cradled Dean's face in his hand, kissing his mouth softly with lightly chapped lips. Dean smelled that smell, that kicked so many frustratingly close memory triggers in his head, and inhaled deeply, pressing close and opening his own lips to let Sam in. It got a little messy and wet, and the taste of Sam's mouth put extra layers on the memory thing, as well as getting Dean hard in maybe three seconds. Sam was making turned-on noises when he finally made a sort of sad sound instead and let their mouths come apart gently. "It's not far to the motel," he promised, whispering, as though talking as much to himself as Dean. "And not really safe right here."

"Yeah, so, uh, good, drive, right," Dean babbled, crawling across the seat after Sam as the latter retreated to driving position, to keep the smell of his brother in every inhalation. 

"I love you too, but I can't drive with you in my lap," Sam said softly, into Dean's ear, and kissed the curved outer shell.

"Uh," Dean said, and forced himself back, grabbing onto the seatbelt and putting it on. "Sorry, again. It's your smell. It's like I can almost remember...things. Maybe everything."

"Smell is the most memory-stimulating sense, because it bypasses a lot of the processing the other senses go through, so that sometimes, when you smell something, you're *in* a moment from your memory, when that smell was present," Sam said, starting the car and beginning to guide them down the curved gravel driveway toward the shoulderless blacktop two-lane.

"I just remembered something else. You're really, really smart."

"You harass me for it."

"I've also remembered about being an asshole sometimes, then, if I do that," Dean said after an embarrassed moment.

"Dean..." Sam smiled at him, and Dean nearly broke the seatbelt right out of its anchors to crawl toward him again, but it held. Sam finished "You're smart, too. You just chose, a long time ago, to pretend you weren't. You wanted Dad's approval, and being a brain...rather, *using* one's brain for anything other than immediate action and decision-making didn't seem to be something he admired."

"But that didn't stop *you*," Dean surmised.

The smile left Sam's face, though he remained composed. "No," he said softly. "It didn't. And for reasons I'd prefer not to discuss at the moment I just want to say that I love you and I'll never leave you."

Dean swallowed. That was a comforting thing for a person in his position to hear. That'd be an awesome thing for anybody to hear, from someone they loved. "Thank you. I...don't really see me leaving you, either."

"We've had our experiments in that direction..."

"Yeah, I kinda thought, when you said you'd rather not discuss reasons. I take it the experiments sucked."

"Like their own little worlds of Hoover."

***

"Boy, we don't *live* like the world's ending, do we?" Dean muttered, not particularly bratty, just taking note, as he glanced around while Sam pulled the car into the parking lot and up to the spot in front of their door at the Super-8. 

"This place isn't bad, actually. Looks shabbier out here. Our usual job--being hunters, like I said--doesn't pay," Sam said, sounding a bit grim. "We get by on pool and dart hustling. And, um, a talent for petty fraud, a la credit card. That's one reason we don't spend much. Except for the hustling, which is only bilking greedy assholes who are trying to bilk *us* because they think we can't play or we're too drunk to know what we're doing--what we spend, we essentially have to steal from the system."

"What is it we do, exactly?" More freaky pictures in his head. He closed his eyes. "Oh, wow."

"I get the feeling you're seeing some of it."

"I'm seeing some wild shit. I'm seeing you...oh, my God. This...black smoke...it's coming out of some guy's *mouth*. Pooling on the floor, sinking...the smoke is a demon, isn't it?"

"You're remembering my pulling a demon out of someone," Sam said mildly as he turned the car off. 

"We can do that?"

"I can do that, because I'm part demon." Sam gazed at his lap. "Wasn't born that way. Happened when I was six months old. Our mother died at the same time. Long story; if we don't get your memory of it back soon, I'll tell you."

"That's why demon whammy doesn't work on you."

"Well, it′s different now, but I did stand a better chance than you did. Which you evidently spaced on, in the thick of things, and ended up trying to cover my ass anyway, which is why you caught the edge of it, instead of either of us getting hit full force. I don't know if I would have been perfectly all right. But I didn't see, because I was busy chucking an occasional table at the demons around Cas." He reached over and patted Dean's shoulder, but it was quick; he didn't look Dean in the face, either. "Come on, let's go order some dinner in, or something."

They got out and locked the car; Sam produced the room key, and they went inside. 

Dean got an impression of a brown-plaid-and-white room, plain, but looking and smelling very clean; it had two beds, and the room was lit by two of the small lamps on bedside tables--

He was slammed back into the wall near the door by a guy in a rumpled suit minus the coat, and the tie completely askew; his bright blue eyes were wide and staring, examining Dean. The contact had felt like being the pile under a driver, but things quickly improved when the kissing started.

Sam had vanished somewhere, or else all Dean could focus on was how well the dark-haired man--angel--from his scattered memories kissed. He remembered a scruffy evening beard on the guy most of the time, but his face was smooth now. Dean thought of the arrangement Sam had described--an all-guy troika, with two of the guys brothers--and realized it wouldn't take long for beardburn to become not only uncomfortable but incriminating. Sam's face had been smooth, too.

"Mm--" Castiel made a speech-intent noise as he finally broke the kiss, still holding Dean against the wall with his body, his hands planted to either side of Dean's shoulders. "I saw you go down covering Sam; I didn't know if you'd been hit. It was right when I flew the remaining demons to two thousand feet over the Antarctic Ocean. Demons are terrible fliers in any sense. Then I flew back to the house, but you'd gone by that time."

"You skydived them to death?" Wow.

Sam spoke. "Um...Cas, before you say anything that confuses him any more, he got clipped with the edge of that amnesia thing."

Dean was gazing into Castiel's eyes. Sheerly awesome power there. It was the same kind of intensity he'd seen in Sam's eyes, but Castiel's...burned, like lightning, like white heat. Which was odd, when you thought about it, who the angel was, and who was part demon. Not that he could comment, or do anything but stand there with his jaw hanging like an idiot, his own eyes like pie plates, and, between the two of them and their obviously well-practiced kissing, a hardon that was starting to hurt.

Pie sounded good with dinner, he thought absently, as the "pie plate" comparison occurred in his head.

"Oh," Castiel muttered, backing up. "I'm sorry, Dean. Do you know who I am?"

"Cas," Dean replied automatically, nodding like one of those animal dolls you see in the back windows of cars. "An angel. You rebelled against Heaven for us, for me...I love you. And I wanted your overtight ass even when I still thought you were a dick." He blinked. "Uh, I didn't remember that part until just now." Sam was somewhere in the room making a manful--and ineffective--attempt to stifle giggles and snorts, but Dean couldn't look away from Castiel's concerned eyes. He went on "You...flew the demons--"

"It wasn't easy--I had to touch them or get them all touching me at the same time, and if you think it's not complicated to thusly arrange four demons who all want to kill you without any of them succeeding--Sam, the knife's in your duffel," he added, having turned a bit to speak to the big man fooling in their belongings, some of which were stacked on the dresser. 

"Yeah, found it."

"You're all right?"

"I'm fine. I just wish Dean had remembered to let me play human shield. I'm going out to get the stuff I brought back from the house." 

Castiel nodded. As Sam came by them, he leaned in and kissed Cas, caressing the angel's cheek briefly. "I'm glad you're okay. I was worried."

"I am difficult to kill." Castiel was smiling. It was barely there, but the specific radiance of his whole demeanor was different for it, and Dean smiled at it, too. He wasn't sure if a big toothy expression would look right on Cas--if it would look very Cas. No way to tell until he got some more of his memory back. But the little smiles were adorable.

He wondered if he thought words like "adorable" very often. Maybe he shouldn't talk much until some more memory kicked in.

***

In Miami, Oklahoma, there weren't that many places to choose from in terms of delivery food; they did manage to avoid the ubiquitous lousy pizza and get hold of some decent Chinese. The small dining table was barely adequate to Sam's knees, but sturdy enough. Dean ate his fortune cookies, thinking about pie. Pumpkin pie. With whipped cream...someone had made him one like that, once, just for him, he'd been...about ten...

"Bobby made me a pie," he announced suddenly.

Sam looked up, chewed a little, swallowed, and grinned. Schitzen, that grin was like sunrise. "Yeah, he's made you a few, over the years, usually for your birthday or something. Some of Dad's other friends have, too."

"This one was pumpkin." He felt a bit wistful, and realized he must've looked it by what Sam said next.

"Don't worry, Dean; tomorrow, on our way north, we'll locate a diner and get you some pie. We'll get a whole pie you can take with you."

Dean nodded enthusiastically. "That sounds good."

"We'll even get you ice cream with it," Cas added; he was reclining on one of the beds, not eating anything. Something about the beef the main dish mostly consisted of had sent him scuttling from the table area. He was examining the witches' notes, and comparing sketches with a completed amulet. Dean hadn't remembered, and Sam had to tell him, that Castiel only ate or drank at specific invitation.

"Cas. Fortune cookie?" Dean held out his last one. Cas held up a hand; Dean pitched the little wafer to him, and Castiel, too fast to see, plucked it neatly out of the air. He carefully broke it, getting crumbs on his front, and opened the little paper slip. Perfectly straight-faced, in that gravelly growl that made Dean feel squirmy in the nether regions, he gazed at the paper and said "'My pony tail got chopped off by one of the carving machines. I hope you didn't order the Hunan Beef'."

Sam got his hands up to his face before he literally blew rice out his nose; he then bent over, past double, head between his knees, trying to get himself under control, while Dean laughed, but stared at Sam. "Jeez, Sam, it was funny, not the death joke from Monty Python." He wondered if it said anything about him that if he had a middle name, he was currently ignorant of it, but he remembered zillion-year-old British comedies.

Castiel was picking up the crumbs from his shirt by licking his forefingers and sticking the little pieces thereto, then licking his fingers again. "It's something you may not remember, yet. I had a bit of a problem with ground beef at a...certain point. Really, it's not funny, I suppose..."

"Sam definitely seems to think it is."

"I think we've all developed senses of humor appropriate to our grim situation. While it was unpleasant for all of us, Sam underwent the worst of that whole occurrence, though he was also the salvation of our mission."

Sam was calming down. "It's okay, Cas. The aftermath...it was a lot better after you came in and stayed with me. And I promise I'll try to remember not to order the beef for a while. But if you think you can keep Dean away from burgers for long..."

"Burgers?" Dean perked up. "I think I like burgers. I remember a lot of 'em, now that you mention."

"And we'll get you one of those tomorrow, too," Sam soothed him. "Kansas has plenty of Stuckey's Restaurants along the interstates. Cas can fly on ahead while you eat it, and rejoin us later."

"I'll share my pie," Dean offered hopefully to Cas, having no idea whether being booted from the Stuckey's due to the bad blood between angel and ground beef would bother Castiel or not. 

Cas graced him with a little smile. "I'd love a taste of your pie, Dean."

"Pervert," Sam muttered, smirking.

Castiel returned his attention to the notebook, turning a page. "He's not *my* brother," Cas reminded no one in particular, in a barely-audible mutter.

***

"Um...how do we sleep? Oh, man." As soon as Dean asked the question, a number of different possibilities and eventualities, all of which had happened already at least once, flooded his brain. He groaned and facepalmed. "How don't we sleep?"

Sam laughed. "Cheer up. No one's going to make a move on you while you're an amnesiac."

"That's supposed to cheer me up? My dick is sprained. It needs some relief." He sighed. "And you both...one of the things I do remember is you."

Sam and Castiel looked at each other; Sam was half-naked, in undershorts and a pair of cutoff sweatpants, after a shower. He was fucking gorgeous. Cas was dressed as usual, minus his trench and suit coat, and was also fucking gorgeous. Dean sighed and slumped over on the bed he was sitting on. They were going to be so careful of him he'd never sleep without jerking off in the bathroom five times. Okay, maybe four, tops. Sam might be right about the slut thing, but still, Dean wasn't quite as young as he used to be. And he didn't know what might be available for lube. He couldn't remember any specific occasions, but he could remember thinking with great disgust that a frayed dick was absolutely no fun. 

"Dean." The warm-snuggly voice, and a hell of a loud creak from the bed as weight settled onto the mattress behind him. Must be his huge, gorgeous brother. Powerful arms wrapped around Dean's T-shirt-clad torso. "Try to see it from our point of view. We'd...be taking advantage. Sort of."

Dean just rolled over, grabbed Sam's head and hauled him down into a kiss. Sam mmphed, but he didn't fight it. After a few moments, Dean felt another set of hands gently untying, unfastening, and removing his clothes. He made encouraging sounds and shifted himself and Sam to allow Cas access. He had to stop kissing Sam a moment to let Cas pull the T-shirt off, used the brief moment to haul Sam's shorts and sweats off--this caused Sam to fall over on the mattress and make a grfing noise, but he didn't actually complain--and turned to land on his back so he could reach up and find Cas, and get him naked if he wasn't already. But he was already, and climbing up over Dean, sleek and beautiful. 

Castiel took over the kissing thing from Sam for a minute, then gently pulled away, kissing and licking his way down Dean's body. Dean tried to whimper "Oh, God," but Sam's mouth interrupted the second syllable. Sam started to lose it at about the same rate as Dean did; he was that affected by what Dean was feeling when Castiel started to work Dean.

Dean took one arm from Sam to reach down and touch Cas, needing to return affection and attention; Sam at once did the same, stroking Castiel's thick, cowlick-infested hair while Dean stroked and clutched at his shoulder, until Dean finally couldn't take it and broke the kiss with Sam, instead sinking his teeth into Sam's thick trapezius.

"Oh my *god*," Sam groaned, and Dean was keening softly into his mouthful of Sam, and then Sam helped Cas hold Dean steady as Dean came--and came--worked carefully through it by Cas's mouth and hands. 

"Fuck," Dean panted at the ceiling, his voice a shadow of its former self. "Okay. Was that so hard?"

"Shall I make the obvious comment?" Cas wondered as Sam dragged him up the bed.

"I love you, and that was fantastic," Dean sighed, rolling to face them--more squirming around to face them, no more room than there was. "Now it's your turn."

With a scramble, Castiel collapsed to his side, looking up at Sam, who smiled and moved over him; then Cas raised himself to all fours. It was as though Sam suddenly weighed nothing, his huge body easily supported by Castiel's superhuman strength as he held the angel, snug and affectionate, kissing his head and shoulders, for a few moments, before he slid slowly down Cas's spine, caressing with his mouth.

As Castiel's hands clenched to the point of ripping the bedspread, Dean breathed "*Oh*, yeah."

***

Sam had taken over the back seat of the Impala on the rest of the way to Bobby's, and had determined, using the witches' research, that one could make a quick-and-dirty version of the anti-whammy amulets with a half-dollar-sized metal disk and an etching pen. The catches were these: The metal had to be silver, sterling grade; the pens had to be jewelry-production-quality ferric-nitrate, and there was a brief shopping list for things like baking soda to neutralize the acid. There was the minor annoyance of potential stubborn stains on one's person, the necessity of procuring and wearing protective clothing of the correct sort, and the need to mix the ferric acid and the water, in a proper container, under a fume hood in a well-ventilated space. Also, the etching had to be exact--so if the resist dissolved too soon, or wasn't placed properly, or you fubared the etching some other way, you had to throw the disk out. Well, destroy it. It was never wise to leave stuff like that on the trash heap, and besides, think of the expense. Fortunately, the things could be remelted en masse, and, with a bit of chemical chicanery to make the silver suitable again, re-rendered into amulet-worthy disks. They were headed to Bobby's, as the only reasonable place to obtain and set up everything they'd need.

The plus side to all this was that this *was* the quick-and-dirty version. The witches who'd invented the things had proven to everyone's satisfaction that the amulets did work--but simply obtaining the ingredients could give even a hunter screaming nightmares (assuming she didn't already have them), and, depending on the individual hunter's situation, could take forever to gather. On the other hand, most hunters already had or could get the necessary equipment for the disks--most had silver-melting apparati, though molds for the plain disks would have to be bought or made (the symbol's complexity was almost filigree-like, and making a mold that would produce the disk with the symbol pre-set would be beyond most hunter's capabilities). The rest of the necessary supplies could be obtained at hardware stores and lapidary dealers. The functioning amulet part could be wafer-thin, backed with a cheaper, harder metal to strengthen it, and then coated with a jewelry-protectant resin to avoid bending or defacing the symbol if you caught a shotgun kickback, were smashed into a door, or slept on it wrong. All that mattered was the silver and the symbol, *if* Sam was right. 

Testing it was going to be the bitch of the century. They couldn't use Sam, of course. Cas was obviously also a no-go. That left Dean, and if Sam, Castiel and Bobby were any more against that idea they'd be on the other side of it. 

Bobby was still working on Dean's memory problem. "Cain't you just angel-magic that off him? You've done more complex shit, even without your extra-high-tension lines up and running." 

"If I could, he would not now be blundering around upstairs trying to remember which door leads to the bathroom. We are looking at a prepared curse, designed as a last-ditch measure to prevent the manufacture of those amulets--if their creators couldn't be eliminated or captured, and the secrets of the amulet's construction obtained. This was not a mere demonic mudball in the face."

"Then we find somebody else," Bobby proclaimed, slamming shut the book in his lap. "And it don't much matter that we hate the idea of using Dean as a lab rat; as long as Dean's under even a gimpy version of an unknown curse, he's an atypical sample as much as Sam is. We'll find some hunter who's got all their marbles. Which I admit could take a while, seein's it's hunters and all."

Castiel frowned. "It shouldn't be *that* hard. This *is* to their benefit."

"Most hunters aren't like our boys, Cas. They'd rather let someone else soak up the bullet, then make some gosh-too-bad noises, grab the intel, and bolt. You kill sentient beings long enough--evil or not--hell, even sentient or not--and it does shit to you."

"So I'm told." Castiel thought. "Maybe I'd better do some recruiting, then. Do you have a personal phone book with the names of suitable hunters? Place check marks next to the ones you'd especially like me to visit."

Bobby grinned. "Yeah, I know a couple guys could use a break from the grind--helpin' their fellow hunters, you know. Besides, you an' your wings can be real convincing when ya wanna be."

***

"Did he find the bathroom?" The downstairs bathroom was so modified for Bobby's exacting specifications, anybody else had to use the one upstairs; but apparently the doors had all looked alike to Dean when he went up there, as Sam was heading out the back door to start setting up the acid bath.

"Judging by his choice of vocabulary when the door slammed upstairs, just in time," Castiel said.

Sam pulled a slim chain, and a bracing rose from the acid bath he'd set up a good distance from the house. "I've just got to--Cas!"

Castiel reached over and deftly removed the medallion from the frame holding it, doused it with the baking-soda based mixture to stop the etching process, then dunked it in a nearby bucket of water and swished it around.

Sam, standing there in heavy protective gloves, apron and splatter-shield hat, rolled his eyes. "You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days."

Castiel glanced up and smiled one of his barely-there smiles. "If so, I hope you find the leadup to it more enjoyable than anything we might be expected to do in Bobby's yard."

"Dog. How's it look?"

"Quite as intended, to my eye, but unfortunately..."

"...it's still only a hypothesis, anyway, until we test it." Sam reached down and took the medallion that Cas handed up to him. "I'll do a couple more of the ones I've already gotten ready, and we'll toss the scraggliest-looking one for luck and give the others to Bobby, along with the ones we did to the witches' specs. After that, I think we'd better let him--once you've done your part, I mean--take over on the medallion thing, while we try to get the holes in Dean's memory chinked up." He eyeballed the medallion, shrugged and handed it back to Cas, who dropped it in his pocket. Sam started to object to the casual handling before he remembered he'd designed the damn thing himself for casual handling. If it couldn't survive a trench coat pocket, it'd be as much use as a sack of dead mice when faced with demonica regurgita.

Sam made to dunk another two proto-medallions as Castiel watched, and the angel asked "Sam...you don't seem terribly happy with the idea of Dean's memory being whole."

Sam frowned as he worked. "What makes you say that?"

"When you see him, and he says something that indicates his memory is...as it is at the moment, it seems to lift a weight from you. The idea of--what did you say--chinking his holes, on the other hand--"

Sam snickered.

"Now who's a dog. As I was saying, that idea doesn't appear to agree with you nearly as much."

"Look, I know he needs his memory. He's not safe wandering around never knowing when he's going to...not know something. He's come up with about half a dozen theories of what quantifies what he does remember, and they've all fallen through, which yeah, I know, is a pretty good sign that he *wants* his memory back, as well as needing it. But I can't help thinking he only wants what's missing because he doesn't know what kind of utter shit it is."

"Still, you agree that he needs to know."

Sam sighed. "Yeah. It's just...it's nice to see him...he's fascinated by things. Sometimes he's almost...happy, which is a word that's never been within miles of either Dean or me; you, I think, are the best thing that ever happened to us in that regard. We've both been...content, at times. But *happy*…"

"I understand, Sam."

"He's thrilled with the two of us--me and you, and our being with him, I mean--which I wouldn't have expected. I'd have thought he'd be more freaked out."

"It's his memories that are jumbled, Sam, not his feelings. What was one of the first things he said to you?"

Sam paused in his work, and couldn't help smiling. "That I was beautiful, and he knew me, and that he was pretty sure he loved me."

"The curse only affected some memory of events and such. He's...confused, but he's still Dean."

"Yeah. Without the memory of those certain events, which I wish he didn't have to remember."

Castiel's voice suddenly dropped so deep into growl mode Sam would have jumped if it weren't for the acid as Cas said flatly "I didn't rebel so Dean could remain anesthetized while you and I try to save the world alone; the whole point--"

"I get your point, Cas. I *agree* with your point. We'll get--" he indicated his homemade apparatus with one gloved hand, "--this done, and then we find out how to bring everything back for Dean, and we *do* that--but no one said I had to like it."

"No." Castiel paused, his gaze dropping, voice softening. "I don't like it very much, either." He reached over, lifted Sam's splatter shield, and kissed him softly for a few moments; then he pulled away, replacing the shield. They exchanged an empathetic gaze, and then Cas sighed a human sigh as Sam lowered the next set of medallions into the acid bath.

***

There was another weird sound, almost like lightning, but not quite. 

"Where's he coming up with the demons?" Dean wondered, looking out the second-story window. He couldn't see what was going on, exactly, for the heaps of heaps in the way, plus the action being slightly around the corner of the house. But all the lights were sure interesting, now that it was getting toward dusk and Bobby hadn't turned on the yard flooder yet.

"He has ways to spot dead bodies animated by demons."

"He doesn't like the idea of killing live hosts any more than you do, I take it."

"He doesn't. And you don't *like* it, either, Dean. You've just inured yourself to the necessity."

Dean and Sam were upstairs in the guest room Bobby had there, now that most of his life was on the first floor of the house. He'd muttered something about it over dinner (which Dean had made) the night before, saying he was just as glad in any case not to be sleeping alone in the room he and his wife had shared.

Dean turned from the window and came to sit down with Sam on the bed. "And maybe you haven't?"

Sam was quiet.

"Can I take that as a no?"

Sam sighed, looking away.

After a bit, Dean reached over and pushed gently until Sam lay down, and Dean climbed up and joined him. They lay listening, until it grew quiet in the yard. Dean's gaze lifted as the door on the opposite side of the bed opened quietly; Cas came in, looking weary.

"They work," he said simply, and took off his trench coat, closing the door and hanging the coat on a hook there. "The knife's in the right inside pocket, Sam."

"It's all cool out there now, then?" Sam asked.

Cas sat down on the other side of the bed, his little almost-smile now on his face as he looked at them. "Yes. We were thorough."

"Good," Dean said. "Take off some more of that suit and come here."

"You should work on your romantic patter, Dean," Sam grinned at the ceiling.

***

"I don't know if I can do this, Cas, and I might freak in the middle, so if that's dangerous--"

Cas stroked Dean's hair. "You won't really even be aware of what's happening."

"Can you...read my mind if I don't...if I weren't for the idea?"

"I can. I wouldn't, unless I couldn't help it."

The day was overcast, and Cas had pulled the curtains. A fat beeswax candle burned on the bedside table, in a glass holder. "Get comfortable," Cas said, reaching past Dean, leaning up a little, to turn the bedside lamp off. Dean reached around with both hands to squeeze Cas's trimly rounded ass. 

"Dean." Cas tried to look severe, but he was clearly working at it. He leaned forward and kissed him, quick and soft. "Now, just look into my eyes. Can you see a generalized glow from the candlelight?"

"Yeah, I can. Should I focus on it?"

"No, the light is there to be a pleasant blur for when your eyes start to unfocus--it'll help to keep you from accidentally closing them. Eventually, you'll be able to; at first I'll need you to keep them open."

"Oh. Okay. Um." Dean had been nervous enough to insist on taking this upstairs into privacy when Castiel had suggested it; they'd been having lunch, and Sam and Bobby had been discussing their frustration over the fact that while they'd found de-cursing methods aplenty in the books they'd consulted, this particular curse was cooked up by a demon who knew how to do such things, and who might have particular empowerment involving curses. Then again, it might be a run-of-the-mill curse brought along as an afterthought. The decursing methods they'd found might work fine, and might do nothing, and might aggravate the situation. Also, there was the fact that Dean hadn't been fully cursed; they didn't know how much or what parts of the curse he'd been hit with, and they might overdo it, or overdo the wrong parts, in the uncursing; and they didn't even want to think of the ways that might turn out for Dean. And they had no way to test anything.

Castiel had put forth the idea of a deep mind-reading to see how Dean's memory looked, in terms of a human memory, in general. Castiel might be able to see what they should be focusing on. Or maybe not, but almost any information he could come up with might help. "I hate to...I know you wouldn't..." Dean looked away, embarrassed. 

"I know it isn't me, if that helps," Castiel said. "This is exactly the sort of strategic disadvantage you've been taught to avoid, and for the more part have avoided, all your life, but listen to me." Cas was wearing his so-sincere-it-hurts face, and Dean felt bad for making Cas worry. Cas continued "I'll never use anything I learn from knowing you intimately, in whatever way, to hurt you. Never. If it helps, I'll swear."

"No. I know you don't like doing that. Anyway, you're right, it isn't you, and I'm never gonna start *liking* this, so." He took a deep breath and sat back, lifting his chin. "Let's get this party started."

Castiel stroked Dean's cheek. "Relax, beloved."

Dean, apparently startled by the endearment, actually relaxed, eyes wide, gazing into Castiel's also-wide blue ones.

"Shh..." Cas reached up and touched Dean's face again, fingers resting along his temple so that his fingertips rested on Dean's forehead. "That's right...relax...easy...you can stay with me, but you don't have to. You can sleep now, if you'd rather..." Castiel fell silent then. Dean blinked placidly at wide intervals, his eyes unfocusing a bit. 

Castiel's head tilted a bit as his expression changed to one of fascination. In a moment or two, he spoke. "You can come in, Sam. He doesn't mind."

With an attitude of mild embarassment, Sam slipped in from the hallway, closing the door behind him. "How is he?"

"I need to observe for a while. Just have a seat."

Sam reached across the bed, slow and careful so as not to bounce anyone and disturb the gaze being held, and took Dean's hand. Interestingly, Castiel smiled a little.

"What is it?" Sam whispered.

"He's glad you're here, and comfortable, that's all. Now hush; I have to concentrate."

Sam watched as, after about five more minutes, Dean's eyes slowly closed; Castiel cradled his face in one hand, and guided him back to rest on a pillow that lay against the footboard. He leaned down next to Dean and whispered in his ear, too soft for Sam to hear what he said; then he kissed the edge of the ear he'd whispered in. He got up carefully so as not to jostle Dean too much, and came around the bed. "Tell him you'll be nearby," Cas murmured. "And that he can rest. Whisper it to him. He'll hear." 

Sam blinked, then leaned across the bed; he had to scootch over a bit, but he didn't surrender his hold on Dean's hand. "I'll be here when you wake up, Dean," he whispered. "Just have a nap." He felt a sympathetic touch from Castiel as he kissed Dean's ear, too. He squeezed Dean's knuckles as well, before laying his hand next to his leg on the nubbly-patterned cotton bedspread.

They left the room quietly; in the hall, Sam said "He won't remember that, will he?"

"Not the precise words. He's likely dreaming about us; he's very aware of us right now."

"Me, too?"

"Yes. You came and touched him, paid attention, as the process went on. I could feel your attention on him, your concern; he could feel it, too."

"I didn't screw anything up, did I?"

Castiel slid his arms around Sam's waist in the dim, quiet hallway, and reached up to kiss him, long and very soft. "No." Cas rubbed his face against Sam's shoulder. "Let's go down. Dean does need to sleep for a bit, and we should tell Bobby the process was unremarkable; Dean will have a brief rest, and wake much the same. But I should wait to tell you whatever I may have discovered until he's ready to hear."

"Come on, Cas, if there's--"

"Nothing I can be certain of--I'll have to talk to him before I know much that will help."

They moved as quietly as they could down the stairs; Bobby was napping, and they closed the front door carefully as they went out.

They walked out away from the house, through the gate, and away from the road, across the plain. "What do you want to hear, Sam? Maybe there are a few things I can tell you."

"You know what I want to know. If it's possible that...that it would be safer not to try to restore his memory completely, or that it isn't possible, but I'm not..."

"You're not sure you want that to be so."

"I don't know, it's not like I've lost my brother. He's right there, all of him is. Like you said, his memories are more confused than lost. A lot of times, if you just remind him of something, he remembers it, and a lot of things associated with it. I don't know. There's not much time left, maybe. Would it be a gift not to make him live through what's left with the memories he had before? Or would it...be a violation, to take them from him?"

"I understand your quandary. The memories you're thinking of are not pleasant ones. To put it mildly." 

"And I don't even just mean hell."

"I know."

"If he didn't get them straightened out...he might be useless to Michael."

"I don't think so, Sam. Dean is, genetically speaking, the prime vessel for Michael, though if Dean died and were unressurectable..." Castiel cleared his throat. "Michael would be forced to choose a substitute, and he would. The next most compatible. But without everything intact and functioning as usual...he'd probably only be more vulnerable to Michael."

"That's occurred to me, too, since you told me about Raphael's vessel." Sam stopped walking and ran a hand through his hair, then turned to embrace Castiel. "I wish I could be like you."

Castiel gave his short-chopped half-chuckle. "I'm extremely glad that you're not."

"I mean, because you have no doubt about what to do. Tell Dean what you found, if anything; we'll add it to what we already know...and Dean'll be the one to decide. You'd never do it any other way."

"I know Dean well enough to know he would never want to face what we'll eventually have to face--one way or another--without all his faculties working properly. As far as what I know about his memory, I can tell you this much; if nothing is done, and Dean continues to live with us, or any others who know him and his life well--he'd probably, eventually, end up with most of his memory sorted back out. Even things no one else knows--since, as you noted, memories are connected to each other. This, of course, is contingent on whether he lives long enough."

"Then I guess it doesn't matter as much as I thought. And anyway...you're right. Dean and I have tried a million times to make decisions for each other if we don't like what the other guy came up with on his own. But it never worked for shit, and we don't have time for that now...I have his forgiveness for so much, and it'd be stupid to blow it trying to keep his own past a muted jumble to him, instead of a godawful clarity." He sighed. "I guess I'm an asshole."

"No. You wanted to spare him pain. If there is an option, though, we have to take advantage of it."

"Yeah. I know. You're always right. Doesn't it get old?"

"I'm not right half as often as I used to be. Not even that." Castiel smirked a little bit. "I was righteous. And sometimes right. But I didn't question when I should have...sorry, I know what you meant. I'm not right so much as...I don't know any other way to behave."

Sam squeezed him, and if it'd been Dean he was squeezing there might have been squalled protests and the crumping sounds of relocating vertebrae, but Cas only squeezed him back, as hard as it was safe to squeeze a human, or at any rate Sam.

***

Dean cleared his throat and asked "So...what else exactly did you see in there?"

"Do you mean specific memories? That wasn't what I was concentrating on, really; what I learned of those was incidental, in trying to determine the type and extent of the alterations to your recall."

"But you did see some stuff, right? You know. Did you get graphics and everything?" 

Castiel gave him a look, pausing on his way down the stairs. "If you're referring to showering, relieving yourself, masturbation--"

"No! Not, er, totally..." Dean's voice got small and trailed off. 

"I can only say this: One, if such things worry you, even as closely as we've been living for some time, your priorities are skewed; and two, angels don't think of all that as anything but human, and unremarkable, which you have to admit it is. You in general, on the other hand--" Castiel paused as he reached the ground floor, and Dean stopped next to him, "--are quite remarkable." He kissed Dean. "And I don't think we'll have any problems we can't work with in getting your recall mechanisms straightened out."

They emerged into the ground floor area where Bobby's desk was; Sam and Bobby were predictably still staring at the pages of thick hardback books, but they both lost interest in them so fast it was obvious they hadn't been exactly entranced. 

Castiel, as usual, came straight to the point. "We can restore Dean's recall," he told them. "But I can't promise there'll be no aftereffects."

"What kind of aftereffects?"

"Sam showed me a painless, and superficially harmless, spell that would--had Dean's exposure to the amnesia spell been typical, and if we could be certain the spell was typical--accomplish our purpose. From what I've discovered, it still will, if I make certain alterations to it and conduct it myself."

"Well, hallelujah and just what was that about aftereffects?" Bobby wanted to know.

"Dean...to Dean, it will be as if...the things he's forgotten--whether pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant--would have only just happened. I'm afraid there's no getting around that. He *will* remember the time between the curse's grazing blow and the time of our neutralizing it. But..."

"But he'll have to go through everything he forgot, all over again," Sam whispered.

"It won't be quite that bad, because he'll be able to remember the first times he went through coping with the memories that hurt him; that will aid the process of his readjustment. But it will still be, as you say, emotionally painful. He may feel like he's...starting over with the stages of coping, despite having the knowledge that he did cope, and remembering doing so."

"God *damn* it," Sam hissed, and buried his face in his hands, rubbing his now-corrugated brow with his fingertips in slow circles. "Damn it. *Fuck*."

"On a palliative note, he will have us close to him in a way he didn't, before," Castiel growled very softly, sympathetically, and sounding unhappy, too.

Bobby didn't even blink at that. "You better be ready to back that up, Cas. He's gonna need you. We all better be up for it, even if it gets ugly. 'Specially you two."

"I intend to see that he gets anything he needs from us, everything we can get him to take," Castiel said quietly. "I'm sure Sam will, too." 

"Something I wanna say here, guys," Dean sighed, sinking to sit on the arm of the sofa. "I may not remember everything right now, but I do know myself. Don't...don't let me push you away. 'Cause if it's gonna be as harsh as it sounds like, that's the kind of thing I know I've always gone off alone with, most of the time. And I remember...I remember crying, right in front of...of someone--and saying that I wished I couldn't feel anything at all, because of the feelings some of those memories gave me. I don't imagine I'll be any happier with them this time around. But..." he shrugged. "We don't have a choice."

Sam lifted his head, his own eyes shining wet. "You do have a choice. You do. Not everything you do with your life has to be decided by what's best for everyone else, too."

Dean gave him a tired smirk. "Why not? Most of the big things you decide have been; even when you were wrong, you were *trying* to do what was best for everyone." He glanced away. "You've made bad choices, so have I. Even Cas has. I have to do this, but promise me this, guys--don't let me tell you I don't need your help and I'm fine. I do need your help. And I won't be fine. Let me say anything; I'll be a bastard about it, I know that much. But...just don't leave me alone."

Right in front of Bobby, Cas walked over to him and tilted his head up for a firm kiss. "Never in life," he said quietly, a promise that seemed to make the earth under the floor echo with it. 

"Not in life," Sam echoed, furiously wiping his face dry. "And if we can help it, not in death, either."

There was a pause; Bobby looked back and forth between them, waiting, but--probably quite carefully--saying nothing.

"Then let's get this party started," Dean choked a little on the words, smiling, tight-lipped, up at Cas.

***

The spell itself was not complex; any halfway competent witch of any sort of background would have known some version of it. In fact, Sam had wished out loud that Shanna and Rich's whereabouts were known, at least to the four of them. But he had a good bit of experience with this sort of thing himself, and, after talking with Castiel, agreed that even with what he understood of the changes Castiel wanted to make, it wouldn't, under normal circumstances, do anything other than what it was designed to do, except maybe not work. That would be annoying, but hardly disastrous. 

They cleared an area in the front room; Sam got the basic tools and ingredients ready, and then Cas came in and rounded things off with his sigils, herbs fetched from odd corners of the planet, and a silver asperger twice the size of Bobby's. Dean sat within the circle, still as a stone through all of it, utterly expressionless; Castiel, having gotten a look at him, didn't even caution him to stay still and quiet, which was a big concession, it being Dean.

The response from Dean, when Castiel did the climactic fling of the final ingredient into the brass bowl with the voicing of a sonorous syllable, and a poof of smoke rolled ceilingward (and Castiel looked a tad dizzy), was to fall over unconscious. 

Sam dove for Dean as Castiel leaned against the table. "He's all right," Castiel said soothingly, "I added a brief period of unconsciousness. It'll cushion the transition; he could have suffered hallucinations and delusions for at least a few hours otherwise, while his brain conducted the re-dedication of the retrieval-pathway synapses that were randomized."

Bobby, who had moved to where Sam was holding Dean's upper body in his lap, Dean's head on his broad-as-a-barn shoulder, glanced up at him, a brow quirked, and asked "You been studying neurology?"

"I'm an angel," Castiel muttered, waving the question away as he experimented with standing up sans support. 

Dean was coming around. "Sam?" he croaked, and swallowed.

"Yeah, it's me. Cas and Bobby are right here. How do you feel?"

Dean lay against Sam's chest and panted a moment, then suddenly launched himself to his feet and made for the bathroom in an impressive demonstration of physical coordination for someone who had just fainted. Vomiting sounds could be heard from behind the door. 

"Yeah," Sam sighed, the worried version of his puppy-face evident. "I figured. "

***

"He TOLD us--"

"And that time will come very shortly. He needs this, Sam; think of it as a temporary catharsis. Neither we nor anybody else can be there for him, if our mere presence is more of...of an aggravating factor to him--a reminder of what he can't make not have happened. It's all right." Castiel stroked Sam's cheek and kissed his lips briefly. "I'll know when its safe for us to go to him." From the yard, there were the sounds of crashing, screaming--some of it obscenities, some just wordless agony--and the heartbreaking sound of a dedicated macho shithead who was so broken and despairing that he didn't care if anyone heard him wailing in sorrow at the top of his lungs. And it was making all of them feel like Dean had a minute ago.

"How long will it take?" Sam wondered softly.

"I don't know," Castiel said, expressionless as always, but slowly, and plainly sad. "You might try drinking a moderate amount of alcohol. Moderate, mind you. But it is one of the stress coping mechanisms you're used to, and it might help you while we wait."

Sam nodded and the floor, his adam's apple bobbing in an exaggerated swallow; then he glanced back up at Cas. "What about you?"

"I'm going to be keeping an eye on him, invisibly."

Sam smiled sadly, then went to the kitchen to put Castiel's advice into practice. Castiel vanished from the room. 

***

Sam and Bobby were letting beers go flat in their hands and staring listlessly at the TV; except for the occasional strangled wail and the even more occasional thud, hollow thunk, or crash, it had quieted down in the yard. Dean, and a presumably invisible Castiel, had been out there for two hours. There had been long stretches when there was no sound audible from inside, and they'd both hoped to see Dean coming in, perhaps with Castiel, perhaps alone; but then some fresh anguished sound would disabuse them of the notion.

Finally the kitchen door opened, and Castiel came in. Cas was carrying Dean in his arms like a sleeping child. The door closed itself behind them without Castiel making his usual door-closing hand gesture. Sam, who'd leapt up and was standing in the doorway, holding himself braced on the frame as though he'd fall if he didn't, said "Oh, my God--"

"I put him to sleep. He began attacking himself."

"Ah, shit, no. Jesus..." Bobby sighed from under his cap brim, his face concealed by it and his  
hand. 

"I left your poker on the porch, Bobby, leaning next to the door. And I corrected most of the damage to your property that Dean caused."

Sam said quietly, moving into the kitchen, "Can I take him upstairs? Is he hurt bad?"

"He undoubtedly has a number of bruises, but when he began to drag broken pieces of glass along his exposed skin, I stopped him. He wasn't coordinated enough to give himself more than a few scrapes." 

Sam lowered himself to one knee, holding his arms out, high enough that he'd still have most of his body under the weight, even if it was off-center. With a quiet grunt, he got the other foot under himself, and rose, balancing Dean's weight. "Is he dreaming?"

Castiel looked away. "Right now, I don't know. But he probably will, at least some. If he begins to be restive, I'll see what I can do. When he wakes...I don't know precisely what will happen. But I do know he can drink 80-proof alcohol very quickly. Since he can get so much down so fast, we'll have to watch him; in this condition, he could easily kill himself with alcohol poisoning, whether intentionally or otherwise."

Sam's face was still, but hard. "Yeah. I'd thought of that, too. That particular danger runs in Dad's side of the family."

***

Dean felt himself fighting the covers, and then he felt long, muscular arms and a large, familiar-smelling body against his, and he stilled and fell back, panting. 

After a few breaths, he whispered hoarsely "Sammy..."

"Who else, this big?" Sam asked, not bothering with a jocular tone. He stroked Dean's body gently.

"Yeah," Dean breathed, barely audible. He took another careful couple of breaths. "Think I fucked myself up a little."

"You did, a little. It's nothing we don't have meds and supplies on hand for, between the three of us and Bobby's regular prescriptions, the pain med part of which he mostly doesn't take. Still has the hunter habit of saving them for *real* emergencies, when a hospital's not an option. But at least you didn't break anything."

"I tried to. I broke a lot of shit."

"Your shit's all that really matters, and it isn't broken; it's bruised and contused. It'll have to heal, since Cas can't do that now, but like I said--"

"Sam, *why* the fuck do you love me?"

Sam pressed his lips together to hold in a sigh and lowered his head until his forehead touched Dean's shoulder. His gentle clasp around Dean moved a bit to hold him tighter in places where it wouldn't aggravate anything. "Because I have issues?" 

Dean actually snorted a brief laugh. "Yeah," he said, suddenly almost crying, but not quite. "We are goddamn sure the Issues Brothers. Where's Cas?"

"Waiting for you to call him. We didn't want to overwhelm you, make you feel trapped...you reacted so powerfully to my smell when this first happened...good-powerfully. We thought it might help...steady you." 

"You didn't smell so much like beer at the time. But you're right. I did know you were there, maybe before I woke up all the way. Okay, Cas, come out wherever you are," Dean said, raising his voice slightly.

There was a brief feather-flutter sound, and Castiel's shadow appeared against the dim nighttime-light from the windows; he gestured, and the beeswax candle on the nighttable lit. 

"That's cool," Dean said, listlessly gazing at the candle as he held his arm out toward Castiel. "Didn't know you could do that."

"Oh...little things, sometimes. But I'm better with electricity than combustion." He came and took Dean's hand, going to one knee next to the bed. "Are you in pain?"

"Yeah, but it's--"

"Take these." He went to the bureau and returned with two small green prescription-looking bottles, tipped caplets into his palm, and picked up a glass of water that had been hidden behind the lamp on the table. Sam immediately moved to help Dean sit a little higher, adjusting his pillows. Dean didn't argue, which was more worrisome than anything else since he woke up. He took the pills and water from Castiel and swallowed them down.

"Should we wait for those to work before Cas gets in with us? We don't want to crowd you if you're hurting--"

"In." Dean tried to scoot, winced, and Sam immediately got busy getting everything rearranged. 

"I'm a bitch to you about your being a sasquatch, but I really love it sometimes." Dean said it sort of spacily, as though he were only just realizing it.

Sam smiled, but only said "Can you lie on your side, facing Cas?"

"Left side, yeah, I think so."

Sam cradled him until he got adjusted, and Castiel slipped under the covers facing Dean. When Dean pressed back against Sam and his hand came up to stroke Cas's shoulder, but he didn't look at the angel, Sam and Cas locked eyes. Sam leaned to kiss Castiel softly in encouragement. 

Castiel slid down off his elbow and touched Dean's face, trying to catch his eyes. "Is there anything...in particular you'd like?" Castiel asked him. "Perhaps you should rest. Neither Sam nor I can claim to completely understand what has just happened to you. Are you having memory saturations? Times during which you can't tell where you are from where you were then?"

"I don't know," Dean said, finally, "I don't know. If both of you are...still with me, I can ride this out. It'll take...some time...I can't say, I don't know how to fix it, only forget again and with what I know now, that'll endanger life over the whole planet, assuming I can do anything about it *with* the memories...unjumbled. But like I was, I was Michael-bait, pure and simple."

"Yeah," Sam sighed, gently stroking his hand over Dean's hip. "We talked about that, me and Cas."

"Then just...be with me. And with each other."

Castiel whispered against Dean's lips. "Do you feel physically well enough for us to pet you to sleep? You didn't take the pills that long ago..."

"Yes, do it, please," Dean said shiveringly, a tear or two running from each eye: Castiel kissed them, wiping Dean's cheeks gently. "We will, then. And Dean, I know what you're feeling about yourself right now. I've known since the day we met. But we won't leave you. Whatever the endgame has in store for each of us, we won't leave you until then--and not then, if we can help it."

"I know," Dean said in a choked whisper. "But, Cas...what Anna said she was going to do to Sam--scatter him across too much space to ever find enough of him to resurrect--can you do that with me?"

Dean could see tears standing, undripped, in Castiel's gleaming eyes. His beautiful face was impassive. "If I were capable of it, I would tell you so. I wouldn't do it, though. I'd rather be destroyed myself, than harm you or Sam." 

"So I can't die."

"Not permanently, no. And Dean, if you died in any commonplace fashion--you'd only go to heaven."

Dean nodded, his throat working a moment. Then he whispered. "Okay. Touch me. And if I cry, ignore it." 

Sam and Castiel exchanged grim looks over Dean, but they began stroking him gently, all over, avoiding areas that were obviously the worse for wear, and places that they knew from experience made Dean tense up rather than relax. Dean breathed in light sobs a couple of times, but under their gentle hands, he dropped off to sleep again, more quickly than Sam would have thought--even still-exhausted, emotionally claymored, and thank-providence-medicated. 

Cas stroked Dean's face, answering the unasked question. "One of the pills I gave him, according to Bobby, was a fairly strong hypnotic; the others were mild opioid painkillers."

Sam whispered back--he barely had to shape the words for Castiel to hear him--"I wondered. He's...I wouldn't want the emotional fallout of *my* existence all hitting me at once, and Dean..."

"I know. That was Bobby's reasoning as well. Dean's injuries are mild, for what he's used to; what he needs is rest while his brain pathways resettle." He leaned down and kissed Dean, with intense tenderness, on the cheekbone; Sam misted up a little watching it. When Cas drew back and looked up at Sam, he said "Come with me. I'll know if he wakes or otherwise needs us, and we'll be back immediately; but I wouldn't leave at all if I thought that were possible. "

"I know, but...are you sure...?" Sam gazed down at Dean a moment.

Cas, the planes of his smooth face silhouetted by candlelight, smiled one of his small smiles, the sort that came mostly through his eyes--a certain gentling of his expression--that could melt Dean and Sam when it was directed at either or both of them. Sam had never believed a human face that largely remained immobile could convey so many emotions, until he saw it.

"He's completely unaware of us right now," Castiel said "Unaware of everything, I saw to that, and I want him to stay that way for a while."

***

"Where are we?"

"An obscure stretch of grassland. With more trees than are usually found in South Dakota." Breeze made the deciduous leaves sussurate, softly audible. There was a waning gibbous moon in the southeast.

"Is that where we are? Why aren't I cold?" It was nighttime; the slight wind should have been chilly.

"I misspoke. We're in southern Kansas."

Sam looked nervous. "Uh..."

"If it makes you too uncomfortable, we can go elsewhere, but I thought...I thought it might make you feel better, even..." he glanced around, then looked back at Sam and shrugged. "Even in the middle of nowhere." Despite his clothing instructions to Sam, he had on all Jimmy's clothes, including the trench. 

"No, It's fine."

Castiel raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Okay, so why are we here?"

"Because Dean needs to sleep undisturbed for a while, and you need a break." He sighed. "And so do I. Watching the way he's been, the past weeks, and then seeing him suffer so much...is undoubtedly much worse for you, even, than it is for me."

"And this is a good spot for a break?" Sam looked around at trees and lightly starred sky, moonlight washing out all but the brightest.

"For the kind I'm thinking of." Cas pulled off his trench and laid it across the thick grass, spreading it out.

"I'm guessing you aren't thinking picnic."

"I am, actually," Castiel said, wandering through the low, thick grass toward Sam, looking down at his hands as he undid his cuffs. "Not the food variety, though."

Sam grinned. "Horny angel."

Cas reached Sam and easily divested him of his T-shirt, Sam moving his arms and ducking his head to accommodate him. Sam had Castiel naked from the waist up before he paused in their softly urgent kisses to ask "You're sure Dean's all right?"

"Just at the moment, yes." Castiel pulled the unresisting Sam around, kissing him again, and bore him carefully backward, so they hit the coat and the soft grass under it with only a minor thump, Cas on his knees to either side of Sam. Castiel then rolled Sam back gently, both hands beneath Sam's head to cushion it, fingers moving carefully in long, soft brown hair.

Sam loved it when Castiel did stuff like this. Sam loved Castiel. He decided to mention that point as soon as his mouth got a free moment. 

***

Dean charged out the back door of the old house, feeling his legs turn into whirling blurs a la Wile E. Coyote, genius, fleeing one of his own murderous mastermind creations with explosions chasing along in his wake. He wouldn't have been surprised to see the word "ACME" written on the back porch steps. 

The last explosion sent him flying on the shock wave, fortunately without burying any detritus in his hindquarters. He tucked up and hit the ground rolling, and when he could manage to slow down, rolled to his feet and spun, seeing the tall old wooden house implode, collapsing by slow degrees.

"SAMMY!" He screamed desperately. "CAS!"

On cue, Cas and Sam appeared next to him, weaving communally. Cas looked a bit dizzy and dirty, but Sam, if one was to continue with the cartoon character theme, looked like he'd been handed a round black bomb with a spitting fuse, after the explosion. Two green-and-white eyeballs stared out of an utterly soot-blackened face. His hair looked like someone had picked him up by the feet and used him to clean a chimney.

"Fuggit, you guys, what happened? Is Sam okay?" He took Sam's chin in his hand and turned it to look into his face.

Sam showed all the responsiveness of an inflatable marital aid. Cas eased him down to the grass. "The portal started to open while we were finishing setting up. Everything was in place and our respective sets of incantations were done; I'd covered the table we were using, and Sam was finishing setting the baggies of silver nitrate on the primacord circling the portal's perimeter."

"Shit. Is that what set everything off too soon?"

"Not exactly. When we heard the initial stages begin, Sam and I both turned--well, leaped--from what we were doing to the portal's emergence point to stop the opening."

"Sam can do that?"

"He obviously thinks so. Anyway, we crashed into each other, I dropped the detonator I'd finished wiring but hadn't closed the case on..."

"And the basement charges went off, and everything started to..."

"...happen." Castiel was kneeling next to Sam, turning his head this way and that, feeling around it and the rest of his person. "Sam seems to be only stunned, and his hearing will probably be choppy for a bit. We might need to get him checked if it doesn't clear up in a couple of days. We'll think of something to tell them."

"We'll use what happened when I went temporarily deaf at Megadeath--we had fourth row floor seats, I beered myself into a stupor and passed out, woke up with an entire field's worth of cotton in my ears. For fuck's sake, I don't believe you guys. The Angel and the Demon Stooges. Why do I ever let you do *anything*?"

"Sorry, Dean," Castiel singsonged, expressionless, stroking Sam's face. Wherever his fingers moved, Sam's skin was denuded of filth. Cas cleaned up Sam's eyes first.

"*Oh*, don't you pull that 'sorry Dean' crap--" Dean suddenly dropped to his knees and threw his arms around both of them, hiding his face in dirty material. "If you weren't an angel you'd be dead!"

"If I weren't an angel we'd all have been dead, at some point, by now," Castiel pointed out; he was holding Dean around the waist with one arm, keeping a hold on Sam with the other. Sam, possibly with some idea of what was going on and possibly not, got in the spirit of it and put a limp arm around Castiel and one around Dean, letting his head fall to rest his forehead on Dean's shoulder, since it was closer. 

"Did you get a better chance than I did to find out what it was about this portal that kept it hidden from you and Sam both? I know you were busy, but you were up there a lot longer."

"Huh?" Sam said dazedly, apparently thinking he was being spoken to. 

Dean turned his head and kissed him, which caused Sam to subside in momentary contentment. Cas was saying "I'm afraid not. The witches who chose this house as a hiding spot were obviously chivvied into it, driven here like cattle--probably not them specifically; there's probably a general funnel-type drawing spell on the place, for the obtaining of hosts. The frightening part is that you described the witches in question as being very professional and having a long history of working amicably and successfully with hunters, helping them in that work. They *definitely* should have been aware of the portal, and they apparently had no clue it was there."

"We're gonna have to warn 'em that the apocalypse plays all get out with business as usual. A lot of their safeguards and wards--even some of their personal abilities--may be in question now. I mean, the amulets *worked*, and Sam's modification worked--but that fatass portal was just sitting there in the attic all the time, and they never knew. I wonder if they ever even went up there."

"One would think it would be a necessary part of establishing a perimeter," Castiel murmured, frowning thoughtfully. "Perhaps there was a deterrent set on the attic itself."

"Maybe normal humans are the only ones affected."

"They aren't normal humans. They're blood-descended witches, both of them. A born psychic should have known, for the same reason. Such people are not 'normal humans'."

"How about angels?"

"Um, yes, well. I'm afraid I can't really explain that. I can hypothesize that it was our awareness of there being an entry point in the house through which demons had access and of which no one was aware that caused us to be cognizant of the possibility..."

"...so it might just have been a don't-notice-me?"

"It seems likely. Don't-notice-mes are not powerful spells; once penetrated--once one 'notices'--they become useless. But so long as they aren't noticed, their 'weakness' is a strength--you don't notice either what's being protected by the spell, or the spell itself."

"Okay, that's all we're going to figure out squatting in the dirt with our ears ringing. Can you get Sam? You might as well give up trying to lick him clean or whatever, like that; even an angel couldn't magic that hair into anything human-looking. There are, like, wood chips in it. And your hair's pretty damn scary, too, by the way. Are either of you burned, anything in your skin?"

"Only our clothes. I can fix most of it." Cas was kissing Sam's forehead perfunctorily before picking him up easily over one shoulder. "I'll take him to the car."

"I'll be right there. We'll wait in town at the Super-8 until he's had a chance to come back from this."

"Mmaghmhnm," Sam said quietly, his fingers very nearly trailing in the grass behind Castiel as the angel started briskly toward the car, keeping Sam's body from rocking with a hand on his ass, gripping one cheek securely. Sam giggled. Castiel patted his lightly singed butt, opening the back door of the car with a gesture of the other hand, then carefully swinging Sam down when he got there and maneuvering him inside. Dean was gathering up the tools that hadn't been packed back into the trunk yet--the ones outside the house, at least. The non-S.O.P. nature of the take-down meant there could still be things waiting to go off inside the house, so anything reusable that they'd left in there was a write-off, at least for now. Depending on how long it took Sam to get into condition for long car rides again, they might have time to wait out any old maid bomblets in the place and sift through the wreckage if they discovered, in doing their supply check, that anything costly hadn't made it out of the place. 

***

Sam--all clean now, damp hair combed back from his face--was sleeping, under the influence of a mild sedative, in one of the queens in the plain, clean Super-8 room. The TV was on with the sound down, because it produced softer light than the bedside lamps.

Castiel and Dean were lying in the other queen, Dean actually watching the TV screen sometimes because the TV was set on a show about the Great Barrier Reef, and the imagery was bright and pretty and interesting, occupying his eyes and part of his brain. He and Cas couldn't do anything that made noise, both to let Sam sleep and because they were keeping everything very quiet to spare Sam's ears. There was no danger of permanent hearing loss, according to Castiel, but Sam'd go through a ringing stage, and then slowly get his normal hearing back. The less noise that impinged on the tiny apparati in his ears, the faster the process should be.

Dean slid down in the bed against his pillow, sighing. He stared at the ceiling as the light danced in different colors thereon. "I love you."

Castiel slid close and kissed him softly, then lifted his head and said quietly "I love you, too."

"Can we just...pretend that there's no chance we're not all going to make it alive through this, and that if we don't, we'll all end up in the same place?"

Cas stroked his forehead. "I will if you will. I'm sure Sam will. If he's not feeling moody."

"Then I guess we're in trouble, because we're a moody bunch." Dean turned his head and met Cas's clear blue eyes. "I wonder what makes you different. What made Anna different. And all the angels keeping their heads down, now, I wonder...so many of you, just soldiers, just what you were designed to be. And then there's the rest of you."

"Is that really so different from humanity?" Castiel smiled his little smile. "What makes us different as groups is...the passion you burn with. The intensity of you. And that's because you die, and we don't." He shook his head. "Why ask questions like that? Can you feel how I love you? How I love Sam?"

"Yeah," Dean said, closing his eyes. "I hang onto it. All the time. I'm a prick, but without you and Sam, I'm not even that."

"Stop denigrating yourself, Dean," Cas whispered impatiently. "It's not that Sam and I don't *sympathize*. We often feel the same way about ourselves, each of us. But we love you. It doesn't matter whether you think you deserve it. Nothing will change it. No matter how angry either of us may get at you."

"Mouthy angel."

"You have no room whatsoever to talk," Cas said, smiling again. He kissed Dean's forehead. "If I ever feel it's warranted, I'll beat the shit out of you. Does that make you feel better?"

"Much. But no beating on Sam."

"No." Cas shook his head, his expression vaguely amused. He kissed Dean's forehead again, then moved close and pulled Dean into himself, holding Dean's head on his shoulder. They were quiet, listening to each other's and Sam's breath, watching the brightly-colored life swimming and drifting around the coral reef.

***


End file.
